Posted
by
samzenpus
on Wednesday April 06, 2011 @04:13PM
from the wave-N-pay dept.

jitendraharlalka writes "According to The Register: 'Operator consortium Isis has selected Salt Lake City as its flagship deployment to show the rest of the USA what NFC can do for them. The plan will see Salt Lake City's public transport system accepting pay-by-wave from a mobile phone by the middle of next year. Retailers have also been encouraged to adopt Near Field Communications technology at the point of sale, as Salt Lake City strives to become The Place You Can Leave Your Wallet At Home. The Utah Transit Authority already uses proximity payment cards, deployed in 2009, so adding NFC functionality to public transport is a matter of software not hardware.'"

Note that that the comprised system was "MIFARE Classic", which is an extremely flawed implementation. Other systems are not necessarily such an easy target (and FeliCa is almost certainly better than MIFARE Classic).

Of course, while there are certainly better and more secure ways to implement stored-payment cards, I guess the real lesson is that the entities who choose which system/standard to use are often not very well qualified to do so...

First I have heard of it as well. I suppose John Inglish wasn't making money fast enough so UTA decided to have a payment system so we can deposit money directly into his personal account. But this would explain the 25% rise in fares.

Some background on UTA and Utahs public transportation system for those that live outside of Utah:

When fairly unsophisticated thieves steal a debit or credit card the first place they usually go is a gas station and fill up all their friends cars... possibly even offering to fill up other cars for cash. I suspect grocery stores are similarly used. Its an easy way to get a small pile of useful goods out of a credit card before the owner knows its gone, and it doesn't set off alarm bells the way buying something larger would.

Public transit made the dollar coin relevant again - take it away and the dollar coin becomes a novelty, again.

I think if something like this payment by wave thing becomes common then we can expect hacks where people are charged without even knowing it, at some point.

With all the other ways your cards can get charged with out you knowing or your consent, I think it is just part of the game. All you can really do at this point is exercise personal responsibility and check your card statements a couple times a week for fraudulent charges. The banks and the like aren't concerned about looking out for you at this level.
Living in Salt Lake City though, I'm probably going to give this a try, even if it's only for novelty value.

the battery issue is legitimate and I don't see much of a way around it, but I believe most of these systems require the user to approve the transaction before transferring money. I suspect most of them could be configured to allow some charges automatically (under 10 bucks) while others might require approval.

Ideally you could ID the vendor so that you could set it up to always pay public transit fares automatically while even a pack of gum at CVS might require you to hit a button or even enter a PIN.

NFC is usually deployed for small payments only. If your phone was stolen, someone spending a few dollars on a ticket is going to be the least of your worries. In fact, it might even help police catch the thief.

In Japan, everybody has a portable phone, all the phones have id-chips in them, and everybody already uses their phone to pay for the subway. They've been doing this for years and years, now.
The only way we could possibly do any better is if you could use your phone like a Visa card. That would require all POS card readers to recognize the chips in the phones. A huge upgrade we wouldn't have to make if we had been doing it the way the Japanese have been doing it for years now.

One of the reasons that stuff like Felica succeeded in Japan is that for the longest time it was a cash society (true actually for many Asian nations), and even today you'll find many establishments that are still cash-preferred/-only. The situation would be very different if credit cards had taken root earlier.

I used it there in Feb on the buses up to the ski resorts. My son works for a bank and test used a swipe phone two years ago. When people behind him in line saw it, they all asked, "Where can I get one?" Expect it will be the norm in a few years.

If one of these goes on the fritz because some drunk pounds it with a rebar he found lying on the road, it's going to strand commuters.

On the other hand, since it doesn't involve any sort of slot to insert or swipe anything, that's one less point of weakness. You can plant the NFC transceiver behind an inch of HDPE (plastic decking, e.g.) and it'll never feel a thing.

The ticket-printer slot is still going to be there. Unless the ticket is also electronic and someone

Many subway/public transport systems already have swipe readers, such as TAP in los angeles. It just requires carrying around a special TAP card and opening a TAP account rather than being able to use your phone and an independent billing method. Most stops have automated payment kiosks only and no one gets stranded, they just aren't very attractive vandalism targets and there are a lot of CCTV cameras at the stops.

Yeah, not a very good idea. If I leave my wallet at home and replace it with my phone, that means I have to load all my credit card info, my drivers license, my various id's, my voter registration, and my BestBuy reward zone card, which was just compromised anyhow.

Yeah, not a very good idea. If I leave my wallet at home and replace it with my phone, that means I have to load all my credit card info, my drivers license, my various id's, my voter registration, and my BestBuy reward zone card, which was just compromised anyhow.

What ever could go wrong?

Who carries their voter registration around with them? Everywhere I've lived, you only need something on Election Day, and it's generally just a driver license.

With every such system I know of, payment-via-phone is an option, and you can just use a stored-charge contactless smartcard instead.

I actually have a phone I can use to pay for the train, but I just use a card instead because it's anonymous (the cards can be recharged easily at a ticket machine, or a new one obtained from a machine for a ¥500 deposit) and it's easier to grab the card from my pocket than fish out my phone...

Time to get a Faraday cage cell phone bag to prevent random unauthorized charges if I happen to walk in the wrong place. That would kind of defeat the purpose of the phone though if nobody can contact me... FML.